Nearly Half of Abortions Worldwide Considered Unsafe

But they don't have to be.

According to a new study, nearly half of abortions conducted around the world aren't safe.

The study, published in the medical journal Lancet and conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO), found that for the 55.7 million abortions every year between 2010 and 2014, approximately 25 million of were considered unsafe; 17 million fell into the "less safe" category because of a lack of a trained professional's guidance or a trained professional using outdated methods. The most disturbing part of the study, though, were the 8 million abortions considered "least safe,” involving what The Guardian calls “desperate and dangerous backstreet measures" including "swallowing toxic substances" and "inserting wires to try to bring about a miscarriage."

The majority of these unsafe abortions were conducted in Africa, where abortion-related deaths are rampant and only about one in four abortions are considered safe in all but the southern part of the continent. Abortion is considered safest in areas like northern Europe and northern America. According to the authors, these regions "have less restrictive laws on abortion, high contraceptive use, high economic development, high levels of gender equality, and well-developed health infrastructures."

"The persistence of inequalities by geography, by income, by levels of development...that's the real tragedy that these findings point to," lead author Bela Ganatra, M.D., told The Guardian. "Safe abortion is a very safe procedure. It can be provided at primary healthcare level. It isn't even necessary that it has to be a procedure. Now you can use tablets. There is nothing that requires this to be highly resourced."

Dr. Ganatra added that it's "not science that is holding back the progress but barriers in terms of stigma and law." She noted that in Latin American countries with bans on abortion, women have been using misoprostol, a tablet available online that Dr. Ganatra considers "very safe," but less safe without trained support. "At least [the situation] is moving away from the means that led to death," Dr. Ganatra told The Guardian. "But at the same time, not dying is not enough."

The study also found that women who die from abortions — most often in west and central Africa — often die as a result of complications from dangerous methods used in the the aforementioned "least safe" abortions and a lack of medical care. Dr. Ganatra told The Guardian that the takeaway is the importance of "ensur[ing] access to safe abortions to the full extent of the law, particularly in low income regions of the world."

"Increasing the availability, accessibility, and affordability of contraceptions can reduce the incidence of unintended pregnancies, and therefore abortions, but it is essential to combine this strategy with interventions to ensure access to safe abortions,” she said.